Saturday, July 9, 2011

Long weekend -> Long week

The start of this week was pretty chill for me. Right now the project that I have been babysitting doesn't have too much going on. The guy I'm working with is also very nonchalant about it. So I did a bunch of calculations that we will share with the structural team next week. But then it got busy.

I started helping one of the other guys on the team with his project. All the civil engineering works here have to be approved by various government authorities. His particular project is with the Housing Department and it's the first time that they are adopting this particular type of foundation system. He went before the review board and came back with a ton of revisions to do. Apparently, it's pretty common for the engineers in the government to ask questions and point out deficiencies in your calculations. It's just that this time, the deficiencies turn out to be pretty big. We started looking at their comments and it turned out the source of it is actually the structural calculations, which were performed by their own engineers. We think that some graduate engineer did the calculations and it didn't get checked. Everything that could possibly be wrong with it, is basically wrong. This has tremendous effects on our geotechnical calculations. The guy who's in charge of this project on our team passed some work off to me and was swamped by calls all of Thursday and Friday. His phone was literally off the hook. He would alternate between picking up his office phone and his own phone. It rang so much that it was ridiculous.

Anyway, it was pretty apparent that we had to help him out on the weekend. So we all came in today (Saturday) and worked on fixing the project. Needless to say, I'm learning a ton. There's actually a lot of discussions in our group. We're very open to speculating, asking questions, clarifying ideas, etc. I'm starting to be able to keep up and contribute. Everyone on the team thinks pretty fast and has good suggestions. So sometimes it's hard to even keep up with all the hypotheses and quick changes to test out these hypotheses.

The deadline for the re-submission of this thing is Tuesday. So... might have to go in tomorrow (Sunday) and will definitely be staying late on Monday. I'll remember to bring some good snacks with me. I'll try to spend some time cutting up some fruit and making fruit juices.

3 comments:

Aww. That sucks...but at least you get a learning experience from it. Poor coworker. I read the two articles on China. My old roommate also wrote one about the US barring two Chinese reporters from covering the shuttle launch being a bad idea since the US should probably build better relations with this country. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20077462-503543.html I also think that the gov should've let them cover it. They're just doing their jobs. But whatever. politics.

The trending news these days is the gender disproportion--the abortion debate, marriage--adultery, gay, the institution, and other issues I relate to gender inequality in our society.

See, I have pared down the number of children I want to 2. It would be nice to have a boy and girl. But if I get to choose only one gender, girls are the best. I think it is a result of living in American society that allows some liberties for females...

Oh, and a comment on developing countries... I think all countries pour money into developing some major hubs. The response to the wsj op/ed piece is reminding people of the wealth inequality gap... if you're wealthy enough, you can live anywhere comfortably because technology (like money) has no political borders.

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About Me

I am a geotechnical engineer working in Hong Kong. I recently graduated from Stanford's M.S. program in civil engineering - geomechanics in March 2011. I did my undergrad at MIT, also in civil engineering. This blog contains stuff about my every day life, thoughts, things I want to share, etc.

Highlights of this blog:

- I started this blog in May 2007 when I decided to do an internship in Germany and didn't feel like writing personal letters to my friends and family about my experiences in Europe.

- After that summer, I spent my junior year on an exchange program with the University ofCambridge where I also studied civil engineering.

- Coming back to MIT for my senior year, I spent a good part of it in a class called D-Lab where we learn about appropriate technologies for developing countries.

- In January 2009, I went to Sierra Leone to field test some of these technologies that we explored over the semester.

- I finished my studies at MIT in June 2009 and am now at Stanford.

- I spent a quarter of my first year at Stanford working on a tsunami evacuation project for Padang, Indonesia. I spent Summer 2010 in West Sumatra continuing this project.

- I am now working in Hong Kong at a design firm as a geotechnical engineer.